Ivy Honey Shows Potential to Fight High-Fat Diet Damage in Mice

Honey has long straddled the boundary between pantry staple and folk medicine, but a new study from South Korea suggests that a rare variety made from the nectar of an East Asian climbing ivy may do far more than sweeten tea. Researchers report that honey produced from Hedera rhombea Bean, a species of ivy native to Korea and Japan, significantly improved blood lipid profiles and reduced oxidative stress in mice fed a high-fat diet, while also protecting human blood vessel cells grown in the laboratory from inflammatory damage. The findings, published in Food Science and Biotechnology, position this distinctive honey as a candidate functional food ingredient for addressing two interconnected drivers of cardiovascular disease: dyslipidemia and oxidative stress.

Dyslipidemia, the medical term for an unhealthy balance of fats circulating in the blood, is one of the most common metabolic disturbances in the modern world. When total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, often called LDL or the atherogenic form of cholesterol, climb too high, fatty deposits accumulate along arterial walls, stiffening vessels and setting the stage for heart attacks and strokes. Oxidative stress compounds the problem. In metabolically stressed tissue, cells generate an excess of reactive oxygen species, chemically aggressive molecules that attack lipids, proteins, and DNA. In the liver, this oxidative assault drives lipid peroxidation, the chain-reaction degradation of fats that damages hepatic cells and worsens the lipid imbalance. The two processes feed each other, which is why interventions that address both simultaneously are of particular interest to nutritional scientists.

The research team, led by Mei Tong He and Yu Ri Jeong of Gyeongsang National University together with colleagues at the National Institute of Forest Science, set out to test whether honey derived specifically from Hedera rhombea flowers could intervene in this vicious cycle. The researchers chose this honey partly because of its botanical origin: ivy plants are known to contain a rich array of bioactive phenolic compounds, and prior work has shown that chemical constituents isolated from Hedera rhombea fruits exhibit inhibitory activity against enzymes linked to metabolic disease. Because bees concentrate plant-derived phytochemicals in their honey, the team hypothesized that an ivy floral source might yield a product with unusually strong metabolic and antioxidant properties.

To test the hypothesis, the researchers induced dyslipidemia in mice by placing them on a high-fat diet, a well-established model that reliably reproduces the elevated cholesterol, elevated LDL, and elevated atherogenic index seen in human metabolic syndrome. The atherogenic index, a calculated ratio derived from blood lipid measurements, serves as a composite predictor of cardiovascular risk. Mice in the treatment groups received Hedera rhombea honey at doses of 0.5 and 1 gram per kilogram of body weight per day over a four-week period. This dosing regimen allowed the team to evaluate both the efficacy and any dose-dependence of the honey’s effects.

The results on lipid metabolism were striking. Compared with untreated mice on the high-fat diet, the honey-supplemented animals showed significantly lower total cholesterol, significantly lower LDL cholesterol, and a significantly reduced atherogenic index. In practical terms, the honey appeared to blunt the lipid-raising consequences of an obesogenic diet rather than merely shifting numbers at the margins. Because circulating cholesterol is largely managed by the liver, which packages, exports, and clears lipoproteins, the authors turned their attention to hepatic tissue to understand where the intervention was acting.

What they found in the liver pointed to a coordinated rescue of the organ’s antioxidant defense system. Mice receiving the honey exhibited markedly reduced lipid peroxidation, indicating that their fat molecules were undergoing less oxidative degradation. Levels of nitric oxide and reactive oxygen species in hepatic tissue also fell, while the expression of antioxidant-related genes and the activity of antioxidant enzymes rose. Perhaps most tellingly, the treatment increased levels of phosphorylated AMPK, or p-AMPK, in the liver. AMP-activated protein kinase is a master metabolic sensor that, when activated, shifts cellular metabolism away from energy storage and toward energy burning, promoting fatty acid oxidation and suppressing cholesterol synthesis. Upregulation of AMPK signaling is a recognized mechanism through which natural products counteract non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and related disorders, and its activation here suggests that the honey’s benefits operate through a well-characterized regulatory pathway rather than an incidental effect.

Beyond cholesterol, the study probed markers of thrombosis, the formation of blood clots that transforms arterial plaques into life-threatening events. High-fat feeding is known to disturb hemostasis, elevating factors that promote both platelet activation and coagulation. In the treated mice, serum levels of thromboxane B2, a stable metabolite that reflects platelet activation, and coagulation factor VII, a key protein in the clotting cascade, were both significantly reduced. This observation is notable because it extends the honey’s apparent benefits beyond lipid chemistry into the domain of blood rheology, echoing earlier human and animal studies suggesting that natural honey consumption can influence platelet function and coagulation proteins. Lowered thrombogenic potential, combined with improved lipids, paints a broader picture of cardiovascular protection than either measure alone.

To explore whether the honey could also protect blood vessels directly, the team turned to an in vitro model using human umbilical vein endothelial cells, or HUVECs, the workhorse cell type for studying vascular biology. These cells were stimulated with tumor necrosis factor-alpha, an inflammatory signaling molecule abundant in obesity and metabolic disease that provokes endothelial cells to produce intracellular reactive oxygen species and express adhesion molecules that recruit immune cells to the vessel wall. When the researchers pretreated the cells with the ivy honey, the TNF-alpha-induced surge of intracellular ROS was significantly and dose-dependently reduced. Because endothelial dysfunction driven by oxidative stress is considered an initiating event in atherosclerosis, this cellular result complements the animal data and suggests a plausible mechanism by which the honey’s constituents might shield the vascular lining.

The convergence of results across three levels, whole-animal lipid profiles, hepatic molecular signaling, and cultured human vascular cells, strengthens the study’s central claim: that honey from Hedera rhombea acts by regulating lipid metabolism, bolstering antioxidant defenses, and engaging AMPK signaling simultaneously. The authors conclude that the honey may serve as a promising functional food ingredient for improving dyslipidemia and oxidative stress. The work was supported by the National Institute of Forest Science in Korea, reflecting a broader national interest in identifying value-added products from forest-derived resources, and the study builds on earlier research in which the same honey was explored as a sugar substitute in functional cookies designed to slow carbohydrate digestion.

As with any preclinical study, caution is warranted before extrapolating to the breakfast table. The mice received controlled doses over a defined period, and the doses used, translated to human scales, would represent meaningful daily quantities of honey with corresponding caloric load. Human clinical trials with natural honeys have produced mixed but often encouraging results on lipid profiles, and systematic reviews have suggested potential benefits of honey in obesity management, yet floral source, regional composition, and phenolic content vary enormously between honeys, making it hazardous to generalize from one botanical variety to another. Indeed, the fact that this study focused on a single, carefully characterized floral source may be its greatest strength, since honey’s biological activity is increasingly understood to depend on the specific phenolic compounds imparted by its nectar origin. If future studies confirm these effects in humans and identify the responsible compounds, ivy honey could join the growing roster of bee products under serious investigation not as folk remedies but as chemically characterized functional foods with measurable metabolic effects. For now, the study offers an intriguing glimpse of how a traditional food, harvested from an unassuming climbing vine, might one day earn a place in evidence-based strategies against the world’s most burdensome chronic diseases.

Subject of Research: Effects of honey from Hedera rhombea Bean on dyslipidemia and oxidative stress in high-fat diet-induced mice

Article Title: Effects of honey from Hedera rhombea Bean on dyslipidemia and oxidative stress in high-fat diet-induced mice

Article References: He, M. T., Jeong, Y. R., Kim, G. M., Lee, A. Y., Na, S.-J., Kim, H.-J., & Kim, J. H. (2026). Effects of honey from Hedera rhombea Bean on dyslipidemia and oxidative stress in high-fat diet-induced mice. Food Science and Biotechnology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10068-026-02313-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10068-026-02313-7

Keywords: Hedera rhombea, honey, dyslipidemia, oxidative stress, high-fat diet, AMPK signaling, lipid metabolism, reactive oxygen species, HUVECs, atherogenic index, antioxidant enzymes, functional food